cm70056

Picked up a dozen of these a couple weeks ago and thought I would share my experience with them. I have currently been gaming the Q-Star most of the year with great results. I bought these because I was intrigued by the marketing from Wilson being "long and soft." I paid less than $20 for the dozen with hopes of finding a new ball in the $20-25 range. I took the balls to the putting green for practice. I was thrilled at the soft feel of the ball while putting and chipping. Spin and bite performance was excellent and very tight. I felt the Wilson had a slight edge in bite performance over the Q-star when chipping & pitching. I was impressed and ready to take the ball to the course. Normally at my home course I can usually hit 70-80% of fairways with the Q-Star driving the ball on on average around 245-255 yards. With the Wilson, I only hit one fairway and it was close to the edge of the rough. Off the tee box, this ball spins a lot! I did not get a straight ball flight on any drive. Most balls had significant pull draws that I could not control. I would consider my "normal" drive a baby 10yd push-draw. I made a few changes during the round to try and correct the ball flight with the Wilson, but could not minimize the spin enough to be effective. I feel that the cover of these balls are so soft and sticky that they make it difficult to be long and straight off the tee box. From around 150 yards and in, the balls played well, but were a little too soft feeling on the face of my Mizuno MP-54s for my liking. I did not get good feedback on my iron strikes with this ball. Stopping performance with my irons was good. I have suffered with these balls through 3 rounds, with the only negative impact still being very inconsistent driving. My scores have been higher by 2-3 strokes a round because of missing so many fairways. I retired these balls and went back to my Q-Stars. Driving returned to normal accuracy and my scores did the same. In my opinion, the Q-Stars are extremely tough to beat for the price and the Wilson's just weren't the ball for me. Summary Positive: Great soft feel on and around the green Decent/good stopping performance with irons Price Good looking ball Summary Negative: Poor feedback on irons due to softness High-spinning makes driving extremely difficult (in my situation)

Awesome! Being a Manufacturing Engineer, I love the behind the scenes look of manufacturing facilities. I see Ping has implemented a lot of MES Systems and mistake-proofing procedures to help with quality and delivery.

Since the driver is physically the longest club in most bags, it's going to be the hardest to hit if you have swing flaws. Since the club is longer, any small flaws in your swing mechanics are more dramatic because the head gets further out of line. Try to make sure you are keeping your arms in that nice "V" shape and concentrate on your swing path. To do this, you are going to have to slow your swing speed down. Make sure the club head is square at impact and you aren't on an out-to-in plane (cutting across) when coming across the ball. I used to have the same problem, but I am much happier with a 250-260 yard drive that finds the fairways 80% of the times vs. crushing a drive 280ish and only hitting a couple fairways a round. My instructor gave me some really good advice once that stuck with me. On the range, hit balls with your driver, but only take the back swing back about 2 feet. Do this very slowly and then accelerate through the ball. Try to imagine you are "pushing" the ball off the tee with a square face instead of hitting it off the tee. The ball needs to be flying straight. If it isn't, you are breaking your wrists on the backswing and not getting them back before contact. This drill is going to train your wrists and muscles what position they need to get to before contact. After you've mastered this from 2 feet, keep taking the club back further and further until you are back to around a 3/4 swing. Anytime I start to see flaws in my driving, I go back to the range and hit hundreds of balls using this technique. Regarding the balls, there are higher spinning balls out that may amplify your swing problem, but the root cause is the swing.

The most important question is.....if you don't spend the money on fitted clubs, are you constantly going to be wondering if your game is lacking because you don't have "properly" fitted clubs? For me, the extra money seemed worth it because I could take the clubs out of the equation. I knew I had been fitted properly, so now I know if I get a bad result, it's because I made a bad swing. I spent a lot of money and time putting my bag together and since completing it, I have yet to wonder if I've got the right clubs in my bag. When I first started golfing with lower-grade equipment, I was constantly blaming the clubs because I had that doubt in my head that better/fitted clubs would help me improve. They have, but I firmly believe a lot of my improvement is because I'm not worrying about proper clubs anymore. Just focusing on making good swings and proper technique.

I played with my settings almost every time I went to the course for the first month I had the driver. After that, I found that I had the best average results at 10.5 degrees and I haven't changed the loft in over a year. I loved the idea at first, being able to dial in the loft to match every hole distance, but for the average handicap player who is already hitting inconstant distances, it basically negates the purpose of the adjustable loft. From my testing, I just didn't see much difference from 11-2.5 degrees of adjustments when I am getting a difference of +/- 20-25 yards on a non-changing loft setting. When I am through with this driver, I wouldn't hesitate to go back to a non-adjustable driver (that is, if any of the OEMs are still making any non-adjustables!)

I have made the switch to Pro V1s this year and have been experimenting. I started off buying OEM Pro V1s and obviously I got the best balls with this. I then began experimenting with X-outs and refurbished balls. I could definitely notice a difference when comparing the OEM ball to a refurbished ball. The refurbished ball just does not have the some consistency from ball to ball. I am sure that this is because you are not getting the same year, model, or run of ball like your getting in the OEM package. The refurbished balls gave me a bad impression and it only took 1 dozen to decide I wouldn't buy them again. I then switched to the OEM X-Outs and had pretty good results. I have bought 4 dozen X-Outs so far and I only found 1 tiny paint imperfection on 2-3 balls. Most of the balls could pass as brand new mint condition. The X-Outs played very well for me and are very consistent. My only complaint with the X-Outs is I'm never sure what's going to be in the sleeves. I have gotten Pro V1 and Pro V1X. I prefer to play a Pro V1 over the V1X and feel I have noticeably different results with each ball, so I am thinking about just sticking with the OEM packages of Pro V1. I may continue with the X-Outs since they are usually less than $30, but only for practice rounds. When I am playing a serious round, I ALWAYS want to put an OEM Pro V1 in play.

I just recently ordered a new set of Mizuno Irons. I went into the shop figuring I was dead set on the MP-59's and just needed to get the right shaft. My opinion entirely changed when the clubfitter had me compare the the 59's with the 54's. To me, the 54's felt as smooth as the 59's. I couldn't feel a big difference between the two clubs, but when swung with the same shaft in each club, my off-center hits on the 54's were still decent, whereas with the 59's, off-center hits were pretty bad. Knowing I still need a little bit of forgiveness out of my long irons, I decided to go with the MP-54's with TT Dynalite Gold XP shafts stiff. Lucky for you, you should be able to find a club fitter relatively easy that has all those clubs. Go swing them all and see which you like best.

Well I went ahead and ordered a 302 from across the pond last night. Got one shipped here for under $210, which I thought was a pretty good buy. This is the first time i've ever bought a club over the internet without ever hitting it in person. I hope it lives up to all the good reviews I have seen on it. Can't wait!

IMO, you will never know a good fit until you go get a fitting. There are so many combinations out there nowadays that a good fitter should be able to find something for you that makes your swing work. You need to hit something so good that it immediately makes you realize what you are missing in your current set. I wouldn't feel bad about getting a fitting and not buying clubs. Fitting is what many of the shop Pros do for a living and it's part of their normal job duties. However, I think it would be honorable that you make your intentions clear up front that you are not looking to buy at this time, but want a club fitting to look at the oppurtunity to potentially upgrade in the future. It would be generous of you to offer to pay for the fitting, most in my area are around $30 and that seems very cheap for the knowledge you will gain about what equipment combinations work best for you. In my recent purchase of a new set of Mizuno MP-54s, I went to 4 different fittings with 4 different shop pros until I finally found what I felt to be the best combination. I had about 10 hours worth of fitting time before I finally purchased a set. Most of the fitters had me in a similiar combinations, but each fitter was doing a few little things just a bit different to alter the feel. Also, understand that your swing is going to change over time. In my case, part of my final decision in purchasing a set was that I really got along well with club fitter #4 and I got the vibe that he wanted to continue to work with me on the clubs AFTER the sale to make sure the clubs keep up with my game improvement and swing changes. Try to find a fitter like that that wants your business for the long-term relationship not just the point-in-time sale. Best feeling is subjective from player to player and in my case I guess I wasn't so much chasing for a feel as much as I was optimizing my shot numbers. Ball speed, shot trajectory, side spin, yardage, and line angle (pulling left or right) trumped feel in my final decision. The set of clubs I ended up purchasing "felt" a little bit harsher than 2 of the other fittings, but I was constantly putting up better numbers (by a wide margin) on the simulators. I will gladly take a little worse feel at my hands over on the course perfromance any day. Hope that helped. Bottom line, try to go out and get some fittings! They are fun and you will learn alot about your swing for usally about the same cost to play a round!

I am in the market for a new putter to go with my new Mizuno MP-54 Irons and MP-T4 wedges and I would really like to put a Mizuno MP A-Series putter in my bag to keep things matching. I am having trouble finding out how to aquire one. I see a couple on ebay, coming from Japan, but i'm not seeing the model and shaft length combination that I want. I would really like an A-302 or A-304 with a 33.5" shaft. Does anyone have any good advice or leads on how to easily buy one of these in the US?